Sunday, April 24, 2016

WHY I WRITE

I developed a penchant for
writing when I was in secondary school.
It was to create a world of my own, a world beyond and above reality, a utopia,
so to speak, withing the bounds of reason. It means a world that can be
realized, a just world, in other words.

I write to please no man, although
many men and women are in fact enthralled by my writings, and ask me to go on
writing. I write to uphold the truth. I make no apologies for being a
monotheist, in the footsteps of the true great masters, prophet-messengers of
our One Creator, -- a religion of submission, to wit, a mukmin, a believer in the existence of one lawful God.

I also make no apologies for
believing in the divinely-protected Quran, a scripture given in Arabic to an
Arab Prophet Muhammad. I say protected, because I know it is protected by a mathematically-awesome-imposible-to-imitate
structure based on 19. (See Quran, 74: 30). It is what has come to be known as
Code 19.

All prophet-messengers are without
exception are submitters to God, monotheists and believers. The great names
include Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. Jesus was one of the great monotheists
of his time. When I stated that Jesus was not a Christian, but a monotheist, a submitter and a believer, most
Christians were up in arms against me. Let me repeat, I write to please no man;
I write to the uphold the truth, although the truth is bitter. The doctrine of
Trinity was promulgated by the Christian Church in the Council of Nicaea in 315
A.D., long after Jesus was dead.

One Christian reader asked why Jesus had no father; he must
be the son of God, he argued. Another claimed that Christians felt the Trinity
in the marrow of their bones. The current Pope Francis, a “peoples’ pope”, who
when he visited the United States recently never talked about doctrine, but talked
about the down-trodden and about inter-religious dialogue. The Pope knows
better.

It is a truism that one should not discuss religion. “It is
sensitive.” Again I say I write to please no man. I write to uphold the truth,
although most people do not like the truth.

What the is the truth? asked Pilate, the Roman governor
charged with judging Jesus, whom he found not guilty of rebellion.

This is what I call “the Mother of All Questions”. Does the
truth exist objectively? To Jesus it does, for he said, “The truth will set you
free.” To answer this question is to answer all questions. Why did God create
this world? One answer among many goes, “God created the heavens and the other
with truth.” (Quran, 22: 44) What does that mean? It means all orders of
creations submit to the law of truth. It means God is the truth.

Some clever people might asks, “Can
God contravene His own law of truth?” The answer is of course He can, but God will not
act against Himself. That would mean two gods who would fight for dominion.
That is impossible. As to the atheist, who says religion is the opium of the
masses, challenge him to create one that will last beyond his lifetime.

About Me

(About Kassim Ahmad
By: M. Bakri Musa)
Kassim Ahmad is Malaysia's foremost thinker and philosopher. He grabbed national headlines in the 1950s with his dissertation on the characters of Hang Tuah (Perwatakan Hang Tuah), the Malay literary classic. In it he challenged the traditional interpretation and made the hitherto hero Hang Tuah as nothing more than a palace hack, and elevated the anti-hero Hang Jebat as the true hero, willing to kill even the sultan in defence of honor and principles.
Kassim was jailed for nearly five years under the ISA for daring to express openly his political views, an experience which he recounted in his book, Universiti Kedua (Second University).
Kassim again shook the Malay world with his "Hadith: A Re-Examination" in which he challenges the infallibility of the purported words of Prophet Muhammad s.a.w.
Except for an honorary doctorate in Letters conferred by the National University of Malaysia, the country has not seen fit to honor this great public intellectual.
June 2005